Employee Central Service Center- An Overview

[Ajinkya1]

Hi All,

 

While there is some good content available in public domain to explain the (perhaps least explored) module Employee Central Service Center 2.0, I had many queries before initiating the implementation. I couldn't get the answers until I implemented the solution. I'd like to share a summarized view of information that I collected while implementing this module.

The blog covers-
1. Executive summary of what's Employee Central Service Center (ECSC) and its architecture.
2. Pre-requisites for business and technical teams to implement Employee Central Service Center
3. Implementing Employee Central Service Center (Useful resources)
4. Bonus information that's not mentioned in implementation guide but useful to make most of the ECSC solution

 

Target Audience

Anyone who wish to understand the Employee Central Service Center Solution end-to-end.

 

What is Employee Central Service Center (ECSC)?

Employee Central Service Center a.k.a. Ask HR is a solution that enables employee's to resolve their HR related queries via Self-Service using knowledgebase and via support tickets if knowledgebase isn't enough or absent.

Ask HR Icon

The employees can access the Ask HR icon across the SuccessFactors modules providing them a uniform access point.

What are the Components of the Solution?

• SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central instance (SF-EC)


• SAP Cloud for Customer tenant (C4C)


• SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP)
  To implement ECSC 2.0, you need a Neo subaccount on SAP BTP, as it uses JAVA and HTML5 based components.


• SAP Cloud Platform Integration (CPI)

Block Diagram ECSC Architecture

Business pre-requisites

1. HR team must finalize their business processes.


2. As ECSC is a ticketing solution to facilitate resolution of employee's queries you should-
   
   
   
   1. Decide which business processes will need ticketing support
   
   
   2. Prepare two level Service catalog
   
   
   3. Prepare response template for agents (optional)
   
   
   4. Visualize which questions to include in satisfaction survey
   
   
   
   


3. If you plan to use knowledge base search to promote self-service among employees, you may start creating contents in MindTouch or SAP WorkZone for HR. SAP Jam Advanced plus is no more valid and will be replaced by its successor SAP WorkZone for HR.

Technical Pre-requisites

1. You must have SuccessFactors Employee Central (SF-EC) module implemented.
   Technically, If the Data Models in EC are operational to be able to 'Add New Employee' in EC and RBP framework is active, you are good to go for ECSC setup.


2. You must have Admin/developer accounts available in SF-EC, BTP, CPI and C4C.

Implementing Employee Central Service Center

The latest implementation guide- 1H 2022 depicts all steps in detailed manner; and Arpitha Gupta P V's blog provides you visuals. As of today, some of the activities mentioned in the blog are auto-performed as part of SAP's improvement efforts. For example, 'Javaproxy and askhr subscripts will already active when you integrate SAP BTP Neo environment from Extension Center.' Still the blog is a very good reference.

 

Bonus Information

Now comes the time to discuss something additional that's not mentioned in the implementation guide for Employee Central Service Center but you can definitely leverage to use from C4C system.

1. Which information flows from SuccessFactors to C4C?


2. Could I add new fields to flow from SuccessFactors EC to C4C?


3. Is Ask HR icon the only way to create ticket in ECSC?


4. Which options are available to assign tickets raised in Ask HR to Support teams?


5. How to handle email notifications to agents and employees? Standard and Custom notifications?


6. How many levels of hierarchy could be used for service catalog in ECSC?


7. Can I configure response templates for our agents?


8. Can a user raise a ticket on behalf of another employee?


9. Can I have SLA milestones for tickets raised in ECSC?


10. 
    

    Can I auto-close tickets, if requestor doesn’t confirm solution?

    
    

 

Let's see the answers here-

 

1. Which information flows from SuccessFactors to C4C?

As per Standard CPI interface to Replicate Employee Data from Employee Central, below fields are sent out-

• Personal Details


• Address


• Contact information- Email, Cell phone, business phone

Limitation to Standard CPI interface-

A limitation is 'Job information' element data is not transferred from SF-EC to C4C. The data in EC is effective dated with multiple possible records; however, C4C has only single record available to store the information.

Ideally, a snapshot of current date would have served the purpose. But, this is what we have!

Technical information- The 'postExit' extension available for the standard CPI interface can help you apply additional condition like effective today for the Job information elements and transfer only snapshot of information to the target.

There's a very good blog from Abinash Nanda on the CPI interface setup that you can refer.

2. Could I add new fields to flow from SuccessFactors EC to C4C?

Yes, you can add new fields to the flow from SF-EC to C4C. The 'adaptation' mode in C4C will allow you to add new field in 'Personal Details' section. For some reason, there's no way to add the field in 'Job information' section of an employee record.

Hence, if you plan to refresh any field from SF-EC job information element, it will have to be mapped to personal details element of C4C and proper care needs to be taken to handle the conditions of dates.

3. Is Ask HR icon the only way to create ticket in ECSC?

No. Ask HR is one of the ways in which ticket could be created ECSC. You could create a ticket by sending email to a specific email ID. The Support agent could create a ticket in C4C on behalf of employee and it would still reflect in Ask HR's ticket overview.

4. Which options are available to assign tickets raised in Ask HR to Support teams?

Multiple fields including source of ticket (Email, Internet, Manual), Service and/or Incident categories, Country of Employee, any custom field added in C4C employee/ticket data source can be used to route the tickets to a desired team for assignment.

5. How to handle email notifications to agents and employees? Standard and Custom notifications?

I went ahead creating the customized email notifications for two reasons-

1. The business ask was very customized about sending notifications in particular scenario and not send in others.


2. I could not see much information about setting up useful email notifications for 'Ask HR'; and SAP note- 2859700 guided us to go for a custom way.

Technical Information- The custom solution uses workflow rules from C4C and can trigger customized HTML based email notifications as required. This provides flexibility in keeping notifications as simple as plain text or branded with company theme.

6. How many levels of hierarchy could be used for service catalog in ECSC?

You can have two-level hierarchy of Service catalog in ECSC namely Service Category and Incident Category.

Technical Information- Though there are other 3 categories available in C4C system like object and resolution categories, they are not applicable for 'Employee Support' scenario of ECSC. Hence, those fields need to be hidden in UI.

7. Can I configure response templates for our agents?

Yes, C4C system has a provision to configure response templates for email and portal channels. The admin created response templates can be made available to all agents. Also, the agents, if permissioned, can create templates for their own use.

8. Can a user raise a ticket on behalf of another employee?

Yes, there's a field- 'Affected Employee' in ECSC which needs to be set if you wish to raise a ticket for someone else via ECSC.

One Catch- the affected employee cannot see the ticket details, as ECSC shows the tickets to only to the requestor.

 

9. Can I have SLA milestones for tickets raised in ECSC?

Yes, there are 4 milestones available namely 'Initial Review', 'Response', 'Resolution' and 'Completion'. The response SLA can also be set as recursive.

 

10. Can I auto-close tickets, if requestor doesn’t confirm solution?

Yes, you can write a rule to auto-close the ticket if requestor didn't confirm solution in say 72 hours or 8 days.

 

I hope this information helps you understand what Employee Central Service Center solution offers and prepare better for the implementation.

 

Please share your feedback, views in comments section below.

You can find more blogs related to the module here- SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Service Center | SAP | SAP Blogs

You can also post your questions here- All Questions in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Service Center | SAP Community

 

Regards,

Ajinkya

[MathanC1312]

Hi Ajinkya,

This blogs finds informative for Employee support.

Regards,

Mathan C

[Ajinkya1]

Thanks Mathan!

[santoshkapase3]

@aju.mahajan11

This is really nice blog, One should refer at start of ASKHR implementation, covers all the aspects and minute details such Neo subaccount . SAP should look at moving this stuff to cloud foundry sooner or later, Thanks!

[Ajinkya1]

Thanks Santhosh!

[pieterjanssens]

Are there any plans to migrate ECSC to Cloud Foundry?

[arrouth]

Very informative and insightful. Thanks for sharing!

[Ajinkya1]

Hi piejanssens

We recently provisioned another ECSC instance; and I asked the same question to the SF support personnel. They confirmed that Neo is the only available environment as of today.

[Ajinkya1]

Thanks 357938

[Andrew86]

Hello Ajinkya,

I looked at this article and was wondering if it is still applicable.

2735461 - Ticketing attributes available in ASK HR system

I ask because my wish was to hide Service Category, Incident Category and Priority on the 'Create a Ticket' screen.

Is this possible?

thanks, Andrew

[Ajinkya1]

Hello andrew.smith14

2735461 is not entirely valid as of today.

I managed to hide the Priority field using property- hidePriorityField as 'yes'.

There's a possibility to hide incident category using- hideIncidentCategoryField. But it only works for desktop version and not on mobile.

Service Category can't be hidden.

Hope this helps.

 

Regards,

Ajinkya

 

 

[Andrew86]

Thank you Ajinkya,  I found this article here in the Help Documentation that supported your answer and it states we can hide

showAffectedUserField
hideIncidentCategoryField
hidePriorityField

It is disappointing that the parameters can be applied to the mobile app.  Is there anyone that can confirm this?

Many thanks
Andrew

[JeremyHiltz]

Hello - Based on the 1H Release and KBA 3342801, the new Suggestions feature - i wanted to learn more about how the suggestions search works? With a JAM integration i just wanted to better understand how the seach works.

[Pooja0007]

hello,

I have a question, can ECS receive data from 2 different SuccessFactors instances ?
like 1 SF is hosted on Europe data center and other on UK and they both send data to same ECSC system via CPI?

thanks,